EXAMINING THE GROUND, SIGNS, ETC. 27 



and movements will be very much and very quickly 

 -influenced by still-hunting. 



It is a common idea with hunters that driving deer 

 with hounds drives them away and makes them wilder. 

 This may in some places be true. It may also be gen- 

 erally true if swift hounds be used. But there are 

 places where it is not so, and within my observation 

 deer have little fear of slow dogs. Deer that had been 

 made so wild with still-hunting that it was almost im- 

 possible to get even sight of them except under the 

 happiest combination of soft snow, favorable wind, 

 and rolling ground, I have seen play along for half a 

 mile across an open pine-chopping before two curs 

 wallowing and yelping through the snow behind them. 

 They seemed to consider it only fun, stopping every 

 few jumps and looking back at the curs until they got 

 within a few feet of them. About the tamest deer I 

 ever met were some that were habitually chased with 

 hounds and never still-hunted, and one of these I ac- 

 tually approached within five yards with a shot-gun. 



But more than any other thing they fear the still- 

 hunter. Right well they learn, and quickly too, that 

 mischief without warning now lurks in every corner 

 of the once peaceful home. And quickly they adapt 

 themselves to this change of affairs. I have seen men 

 that were successful hunters ten and even five years 

 ago, but who had not hunted of late, traverse their 

 old grounds without getting a shot or scarcely seeing 

 a " flag;" seeing plenty of tracks, however, and com- 

 ing home wondering where the deer all were. I have 

 seen deer that I positively knew had no other disturb- 

 ance than my own hunting desert entirely the low 

 hills and open canons in which they were keeping 

 before I began to trouble them, shift a thousand feet 



